Sources

Tennessee passes the first of its Jim Crow laws, segregating the state railroad. Other states follow the lead and legalize segregation.

The relocation of former slaves to Kansas, called the Exoduster Movement begins. Within the year, 30,000 blacks migrate to Kansas.

Republican Rutherford B. Hayes becomes president and the last federal troops withdraw from the South, marking the end of Reconstruction.

Divisive U.S. election changes the way votes are counted.

An outgoing Republican Congress passes a Civil Rights Act granting African Americans equal access to public accommodations, including transportation.

Arkansas and Alabama vote in Redeemer governments.

The New York Tribune prints articles charging black representatives in South Carolina with corruption.

Pennsylvania, the home of the oldest and largest northern free black community at the time of the Civil War and a major center for the abolition movement, grants the franchise to black men after thirty-two years of disfranchisement.

The fourteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified. It gives all native born and naturalized persons citizenship and gives blacks equal protection under the law.

Congress overrides Presidential vetoes to pass the first, second, and third Reconstruction Acts, ushering in the period known as Radical Reconstruction, during which the governments of all Southern States, except Tennessee, are declared invalid and the states are broken up into military districts overseen by federal troops.

Virginia legally recognizes marriages between African Americans and grants children of those marriages legitimacy and inheritance rights.